My Mom’s in town this weekend, going to sleep on my couch as I type this, so it’ll be short. We were at lunch, talking about the meeting she’s been attended week. The Rural Advocates of the United Methodist Church here in the Midwest. I asked her if they accomplished anything – mostly just finishing up the year’s paperwork and preparing for next year. So, nothing? She said they were mostly worried about the church splitting.

Splitting? Over the LGBT issue, she says. I posted about the General conference discussion of it a while back. She talked about how the two sides cannot “agree to disagree” on the issue. How her group did not have an issue with LGBT folks and were trying to work with them. How some parts of the church simply refuse. It’s going to come to a head, she says, in 2019, when the commission reports back.

I understand, I tell her, the desire to settle on “agreeing to disagree.” But, I say, Hate is just not okay. They don’t Hate them, she tries to tell me. Mom, I remember the “love the sinner, hate the sin” policy and I’m sorry, but “HATE” should not be anywhere in a church’s policies.

Hate is what is tearing this country apart. People fear religious zealots full of hate, but I tell you, it doesn’t take radicals or zealotry for hate to be in your religion or your church. It starts with all of us, standing up against hate, wherever we see it: in the street, on a bus, at a school. Even in church.